The Coal Question Revisited

Many people believe the world has enough coal to last hundreds of years. Recent assessments now suggest that coal production could actually start to decline as early as 2025.

Coal, in truth, stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities. It is the material energy of the country--the universal aid--the factor in everything we do. With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of early times. ---William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question

The country to which William Stanley Jevons refers is Great Britain, and the year is 1865. Jevons investigated whether the coal from British mines would last as long as optimists were forecasting, that is, several hundred years. He concluded it wouldn't. Today, the phrase, "That's like bringing coals to Newcastle," referring to the former center of the British coal trade, has lost all its punch. The last mine within the boundaries of Newcastle closed in 1956. In 2006 the United Kingdom produced only 20 million short tons of coal, one-seventh its production in 1980.

Three attempts have been made recently to reassess coal reserves, none of them reassuring. The Energy Watch Group, a collaborative of experts based in Germany, has questioned the soundness of the data, just as Jevons did in his day. A National Academy of Sciences study suggests that often repeated claims that the United States has 250 years of coal reserves may be far too optimistic. The number may actually be closer to 100 years; and that number is further qualified as "at current rates of production." With worldwide production growing at a rate near or above 6 percent per year since 2000 (except for the recession year of 2002), it is doubtful that any number followed by the words "at current rates of production" is really meaningful.

But perhaps the most troubling analysis comes from David Rutledge, a professor at the California Institute of Technology. Rutledge's analysis focuses primarily on whether assumptions about future fossil fuel supplies made by the U. N.'s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) can be sustained. His conclusion is that they cannot. But it is the degree to which they cannot, particularly when it comes to coal, that is truly breathtaking.

Rutledge noticed that official coal reserve estimates have been dropping like stones. Unlike oil reserve estimates--which for any one field tend to grow over time as the field is developed--coal reserve estimates have plummeted as unwarranted assumptions have been stripped away, and the focus has been put on what is actually minable. Rutledge went further by calculating projected future recoveries using a method now popular with peak oil analysts called Hubbert Linearization. When he applied it to coal, he discovered that it resulted in a whopping 50 percent haircut for world reserves. Rutledge's numbers are detailed in the table below:

Reserves vs Projected Future Recoveries for World Coal

(in gigatons)

SELECTED REGIONS

RESERVES Gt

PROJECTED Gt

REVISION

Eastern U. S.

96

37

-61.4%

Western U. S. w/o Montana

79

33

-58.2%

Montana

68

68

None

Central & South America

16

16

None

China

189

88

-53.4%

South Asia

68

68

None

Australia & New Zealand

77

50

-35.1%

Former Soviet Union

226

36

-84.1%

Europe

44

21

-52.3%

Africa

30

16

-46.7%

WORLD TOTALS(includes areas not listed)

903

435

-51.5%

The Energy Watch Group believes that given current growth rates in worldwide coal production, coal could peak around 2025. Rutledge is not particularly focused on the date for peak production for any of the fossil fuels. Rather, his work was designed to show that if his numbers prove to be roughly correct, all of the IPCC's climate scenarios overestimate the amount of carbon that will be released through combustion of fossil fuels in the coming century. This may bring a sigh of relief from those concerned about climate change, but it shouldn't. The world's leading climate scientist, NASA's James Hansen, now believes that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere must be held to 350 ppm to avoid disastrous climate change. The current level is 383 ppm.

A second and perhaps more important implication of the work done by Rutledge and others is that replacing the oil economy with a coal economy isn't practical, even if you ignore the climate effects. By the time a new coal-powered infrastructure could be completed, we might very well be past the peak in coal production and face the same problem we do with oil today.

So, what should we do? Rutledge answers in this way: Leave as much of the world's fossil fuels in the ground as possible for future generations to use for chemical feedstocks, not for burning. Instead, set about quickly creating a renewable energy society. It's a huge task. But, if David Rutledge and others are correct, we really don't have a choice.

Good! Current coal reactors can burn biocoal, inexpensively and exothermically made from essentially any wet biomass by hydrothermal carbonization. It is actually a cleaner fuel than fossil coal, without the metal, etc., contaminents.

Rutledge rocks! "Leave as much of the world's fossil fuels in the ground as possible for future generations to use..." Why didn't I think of that? Oh, because I am selfish, and want to burn it all up for my current benefit. (Actually, I'm leading a nearly fossil-fuel-free life, but I'm a miniscule minority.)

Interesting to quote Jeavons, who also pointed out that efficiency improvements only end up increasing demand. (Jeavons' Paradox) And thus, the efficiency improvements of the '80's, made in response to the last big energy crisis of the '70's, resulted in the energy orgy of the '90's, and only delayed Hubbert's Peak by a few years.

The list does not identify Alaska. Is Alaskan coal included in Western US?

[Response] The data is from the EIA which includes producing mines in Alaska. You may be thinking of USGS estimates for total resource. Resource numbers, of course, do not tell you what is recoverable. And, the Alaskan coal resource which the USGS refers to in this bulletin are admittedly enormous, but practically all listed as "hypothetical." And, that is the problem that Rutledge is pointing to. These hypothetical resources upon close inspection tend to shrink radically. I would not be too sanguine about Alaskan coal until that "resource" is scrutinized more thoroughly.